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Casey Explains Exactly How To Back Up Your iPhone

Transcript:

– [Casey] So first I think it’s important for us to talk about the actual process of making sure your device is backing up properly. Too many times customers come into our store and their device is damaged beyond repair, and they are heartbroken that they lost all their information. And we try to go back as much as we can through backups, whether it’s on the cloud or whether it’s through Google and see if we can retrieve that information.

The biggest problem is the simple thing of setting your phone to back up on a regular basis is not done, and it’s not like it’s going to cost you an exorbitant amount of money to do that, it’s just a matter of taking the time to set things up the right way. I want to talk about Apple because I think that’s the most popular handset that are in our customers’ hands, and that’s certainly the most repairs that we do on devices is Apple devices.

Which is better? iCloud or Google Cloud?

iCloud is a great product. iCloud backup is also a great product but if you don’t set it up correctly then it’s completely worthless.

You need to make sure that you’re going into your iCloud settings and click the information that you want it to backup, and make sure that it’s on green. Another important thing to make sure that’s done, is to actually go into the function called iCloud Backup, which makes sure that your notes, your phone numbers and the pertinent information of how your phone is set up is being backed up.

And sometimes we change this on a pretty frequent basis moving around apps, things of that nature, and to not have that set up, to connect to the cloud on a regular basis is going to hurt you down the line. $0.99 a month gives you 50 gigabytes of iCloud storage a month, where Google does gives you I think 100 gigabytes of storage.

So if you are somebody who takes a lot of pictures, 50 gigabytes can be enough, but if you’re taking a lot of pictures, it might not be, and there are steps that are higher gigabyte that you could choose, but 50 gigabytes will back-up all your photos, all your notes, all your contacts, everything that’s inside your phone.

And just seeing people coming into the store that don’t have that information saved, and seeing what they have to go through in order to get that information back or start over is really the purpose of why I’m talking about this today because there’s so many preventive measures that people can do on both their iPhone and their Samsung.

So, if you want to talk about battling against the two, I definitely say that Apple is way more user friendly. Google gives you more bang for your buck. We’re going to do a quick audit on my iPhone to make sure that all of the settings are correct for my iCloud backup, so that all my information God forbid I lose my phone, everything will be able to be retrieved.

How to back up your iPhone using iCloud

So turn on your phone, there are my puppies. You want to go right here and click settings, and then you want to click right here. It’s going to say your name, and then you want to wait for everything to pull up, which I have several devices on my iCloud. I want to click on iCloud right here. And as you can see, I’m only using about 18 gigabytes of 50. You want to scroll down and make sure that the…everything that you want to be backed up is, and that includes apps as well, very, very important that you do that.

– [Interviewer] So making sure that it’s backing up means making sure it’s green?

– Correct. So as you can see, Camera Plus is not backed up, and the reason for that is that I don’t need any of the pictures or data or information from that specific app, but Google Drive, Dropbox, Instagram, all those things are really important to me, so I want to make sure that everything stays backed up.

This right here, where it says iCloud backup is a very important feature that I think a lot of people overlook. So when you click on it, you want to make sure that it’s on. And as you can see, yesterday evening I did a backup at 11:45, this is what’s going to always backup your home screen, your data, some documents, everything that is important to you that you are using on device. You want to make sure that it’s on, and you want to make sure that if it hasn’t backed up recently, take a moment and click backup.

– How often does it backup on its own?

–As long as you have the device connected to Wi-Fi as well as plugged in and locked, it will complete a backup.

So usually this happens towards the evening time when you are at home or about to go to bed, and you plug in your phone and it’s locked, it’s going to do a backup for you without you even knowing it.

The ability to transfer data at a high rate of speed especially with things that are large files are going to take a lot longer and use your battery life, so that’s why they really want you to do it over Wi-Fi when it’s plugged in when it’s locked, because it doesn’t…they don’t want the backup to interfere with your everyday life.

Now, something I would also take into consideration is that, all of these things right here that are green are being backed up simultaneously. So as I’m doing things, as I’m saving things, they’re going to be uploaded to the cloud, and specifically my pictures, my contacts, my calendar, my reminders, notes, all those are being done simultaneously.

So that’s not necessarily the stuff that you’re going to need to be backed up over Wi-Fi, but there can be some larger files that are stored inside your phone, whether that’d be documents or other things that you want to make sure are backed up. That’s why the iCloud backup is so important to not overlook, because there are things that are inside there that you may not be knowing that you need to store that need to be stored.

Backing up to your computer, a hard backup, is so important

I also want to speak about the difference of backing up via computer and backing up via the cloud. I strongly suggest, especially people who have very relevant business information, to at least once a month plug up their phone to their computer and do a hard backup. A hard backup means that it’s something that’s going to be stored on your computer and not necessarily on the cloud.

So if for some reason your iCloud gets compromised, which is something that happens on a, unfortunately, a regular basis these days, where hackers do gain access to other people’s iCloud information, you have a hard backup where you can get all of the information that you had stored or that was on your device from the last time that you did a backup. I was doing some research over the last couple of weeks about what the best way to hard backup a Android device, and some of the issues that I ran into is that it different…it varies based on brand.

So Samsung has a backup, LG has a backup, ZTE has a backup, and it’s just not as simple as the iCloud product is for your device, which for me this is why I’m very brand loyal to Apple, not because you know, it’s a fad but because it’s very dumbed down, so that you don’t really have to think about doing these types of backups.

And I know from experience being inside the store, working with customers, when I have an iCloud customer, I feel a little bit less pressure on me if they have their settings correct because I know that I’m going to be able to get their data back.

Two factor authentication is actually not a good idea

I think it’s important to make sure that your security functions are correct in both iCloud and Android. iCloud has something called a two-factor authentication, which means that you need to verify on two devices that you are the actual person logging into either a new device or to access your current device. The problem with that is that not everybody has two devices that they’re logged into, and if you lose a device, you’re not going to be able to log into your other device if you don’t have another device.

I know that I ran into this one time when I left my phone somewhere and I tried to access my iCloud from my other phone, but I have a completely different iCloud in here. So I wasn’t able to log into my phone to find my iPhone, and that was really frustrating. And I don’t feel that Apple really explains that in great detail when you’re setting that up.

You say, “Oh, a two-factor authentication. I got to do it. It’s a great security feature.” But do you really know what that entails? So we try our best when a customer either buys a phone from us or comes in to get their device repaired, we discuss with them why we think two-factor authentication is really not the best option especially if you only have one phone.

Make your passwords unique to each individual service

And we’re using similar passwords on the websites that we shouldn’t, so I strongly advise every single person after you watch this video, to change your password on your iCloud or on your Google to make sure that it’s only unique to that specific product. I know that that’s annoying and difficult, but think about how uncomfortable it would be if everybody got your selfies all over the internet, it would not be very pretty.

I’m sure we have to take one or two takes on our selfies to make sure they’re perfect and, you know, on point.

So, one thing that you’ll take away from this video today is definitely make sure to change your passwords and make them unique so that there’s no way that they can be connected in any such fashion.

Make sure your backup email is set correctly

The last word of advice I would give about securing your data and making sure that backups are done correctly, is to make sure that you have backup email setup properly. I’ve had a number of different customers come in and say, “Oh, don’t worry. I’ve got a recovery email setup,” and the phone number’s wrong and the recovery email’s wrong, and then we can’t get into your account, and it’s really difficult to deal with having to go to Apple directly, or have to ask Google to try to step in and assist you with these types of resets because they can take time and energy.

And if you take a few seconds to secure yourself right now, then you won’t have to worry about this down the road. And many people really don’t look at their digital information as something that is…well, they believe their digital information is just secure, and it’s not if you don’t take the right steps to make sure that it is.

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– Do you want to do or have a uniform intro to each of these videos like [Inaudible].

– I would love for you to personally to that, but no, I don’t think that’s necessary.